End of Danish sliding scale ?

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in Polish uniform who could not speak a word of Polish.

It's a matter oi money and power. There are people in Poland who live in palaces furnished from the national museums. There are the dollar shops where there are no shortages. If you have hard currency you can get everything.

At the same time there are children with no shoes and starving people. That has nothing to do with 20l socialism. In the West you have to have at least some business sense to get rich, 1n Poland all you have to be 1s a pig.

I didn't recognise my country - the Warsaw you remember has gone - it is dead. It's like a third world country, worse than a provincial town in Russia - and that is poverty.

Yet Poles are utterly disillusioned with the West. They see how they've been used as a clever propaganda weapon. They hate the Reagans and Thatchers who have used Solidarity for their own reasons, reasons which have nothing to do with caring about what happens to Poland.

They know Reagan's propaganda about the Soviet pipe-line is nothing more than a cynical gesture.

Many Poles here in Britain have capitalist ideas, but I am 100% socialist and not religious. Poland is not DENMARK'S new conser-vative government has pushed its austerity packnage through Parliament.

The system of automatic cost-of-living wage increasmes has been suspended, wages have been frozen until next March and restricted after that, and public spending will be cut by 6%.

The minority Social Democratic government of Anker Jorgensen resigned seven weeks ago when it was not able to push through a milder austerity package. The new government of Poul Schluter is also a minority government, formed by four of Denmark's many bourgeois parties.

But it has started swinging the economic axe with vigour. The linkage between public sector and private sector wages will be broken, and public sector wage rises limited to 4% over the next two years. (Inflation is running at 10%). The 4% ceiling will "WE KNOW that a crime is being prepared", declared a recent lead article in the Spanish daily El Pais. 'We almost know who the main personalities are. But what is being done?"

Spain before this week's ine tuby coumuuu vi Mh. adm anndition of general election is indicated by the fact that the military high command cancelled its latest meeting "so as not to alarm the population"

The Socialist Party (PSOE) seems certain to win a big majority in the election, and speculation is rife on a military coup to topple a PSOE government or even to pre-empt the election.

PSOE leaders spare no opportunity to stress their moderation, and international bankers are reported (by the Paris daily Le Monde) to be "delighted"

by the prospect of a PSOE also apply to most welfare benefits, and unemployment benefit will be frozen for two years.

Additional proposals which Schluter is now trying to push through Parliament would. . sharply increase nursery charges, trebling them in some areas. Low paid women workers with children would be forced to abandon their jobs and return to the home.

Response

The measures are a response to economic crisis. Prosperous Denmark now has a net foreign debt of $2,800 per head (more than Mexico) and a central government budget deficit running at $1,500 per head. Unemployment is about Workers have responded with demonstrations and protest strikes, and there was a strong feeling for a general strike. But union leaders have ducked out of victory. But in the barracks portraits of Franco still have pride of place, and many officers are in no mood to distinguish between pink social democracy and the reddest revolution. revolution. a political confrontation with the government, instead focussing on the forthcoming general wage negotiations.

Jette Kromann of the Danish Trotskyist group TAF spoke to us this Monday:

"There was a demonstration today called by the Copenhagen Trades Coun cil, which is led by the Social Democracy. It was about 40,000 strong, but it was very tame compared to the other protest demon. strations over recent weeks.

The demands were simply for free bargaining in the forthcoming wage round, and 'no to bourgeois dictatorship' The rank and file of the Social Democracy have demanded that the leaderBhip commit itself to restoring the sliding scale [automatic: cost-of-living wage increases,, but the leadership bas refused.

The trade: union leaders won't fight on the sliding DEANE Hinton, the US ambassador in El Salvador, has confirmed that indirect contacts have been made between the El Salvador Will they negotiate a deal? scale, either. Some of them are proposing that workers should go for one year rather than two year agreements, or negotiations on pay rises every six months within the two-yearly overall agreements.

Fooled We in TAF say: don't be fooled by these proposals. Pay negotiations every six months are not a substitute for the sliding scale. We propose that the unions ahould fight for the restoration of the sliding scale in agreements with individual employers, and also by a future government of the workers' parties.

Some trade unionists are being prosecuted for the protest strikes against the new government measures, and we are arguing for the whole labour movement to take a stand on refusing to pay the fines. We are aleo arguing for parents to organise to refuse to pay the increased nursery charges." government, the US, and the left wing FDR-FMLN opposition.

The FMLN has recently launched a new military nifensive in the north of the country, and followed it up VA MIAM with a new appeal for talks.

A negotiated deal has been the constant demand of the FDR-FMLN, and has also been pushed by France and Mexico, while the regime and the US have refused. But the 'negotiations' formula could also mean the radical aspirations of the FMIN fighters being squashed in favour of the compromises of the bourgeois FDR leaders.

Meanwhile, over 2000 Honduran troops, accom-.

panied by US advisers, are on their way to the frontier area for joint oper-.

ations with the El Salvador army.

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Socialist Organiser no. 1982